Penn being thrust into the bail-dock, William Mead was called up, and was asked if he was present at the meeting. Which question he refused to answer, on the ground that he could not be required to accuse himself. He then told the jury that the indictment was false in many particulars, and that William Penn was right in demanding the law upon which it was based. It charged him with assembling by force and arms, tumultuously and illegally, which was untrue; and he informed them of Lord Coke's definition of a rout or riot, or unlawful assembly. Here the Recorder interrupted him, and endeavored to cast ridicule on what he had said, by taking off his hat and saying, "I thank you for telling us what the law is." On Mead replying sharply to a taunting speech of Richard Brown, the old and inveterate enemy of Friends, the Mayor told him "he deserved to have his tongue cut out." He, too, was put into the bail-dock, and the Court proceeded to charge the jury. Whereupon William Penn cried out with a loud voice to the jury, to take notice, that it was illegal to charge the jury in the prisoners' absence, and without giving them opportunity to plead their cause. The Recorder ordered him to be put down. William Mead then remonstrating against such "barbarous and unjust proceedings," the Court ordered them both to be put into a filthy, stinking place, called "the hole." After an absence of an hour and a half, eight of the jury came down agreed, but four staid up and would not assent. The Court sent for the four, and menaced them for dissenting. When the jury was all together, the prisoners were brought to the bar, and the verdict demanded. The Foreman said William Penn was guilty of speaking in Grace-church Street. The Court endeavored to extort something more, but the Foreman declared he was not authorized to say anything but what he had given in. The Recorder, highly displeased, told them they might as well say nothing, and they were sent back. They soon returned with a written verdict, signed by all of them, that they found William Penn guilty of speaking or preaching in Grace-church Street, and William Mead not guilty. This so incensed the Court, that they told them they would have a verdict they would accept, and that "they should be locked up without meat, drink, fire, or tobacco: you shall not think thus to abuse the Court. We will have a verdict, by the help of God, or you shall starve for it." Against this outrageous infraction of justice and right, William Penn remonstrated, saying: "My jury, who are my judges, ought not to be thus menaced; their verdict should be free, and not compelled; the Bench ought to wait upon them, but not forestall them. I do desire that justice may be done me, and that the arbitrary resolves of the Bench may not be made the measure of my jury's verdict." The Recorder cried out, "Stop that prating fellow's mouth, or put him out of Court." Penn insisted that the agreement of the twelve men was a verdict, and that the Clerk of the Court should record it; and, addressing the jury, he said: "You are Englishmen; mind your privileges; give not away your right!" To which some of them replied, "Nor will we ever do it."
The jury were sent to their room, and the prisoners to jail, the former being deprived of food, drink, and every accommodation. The same verdict was returned the next morning; calling from the Bench upbraiding and threats, similar to those so lavishly bestowed on the jury before: the Recorder, in his passion, going so far as to say, "Till now, I never understood the reason of the policy and prudence of the Spaniards in suffering the Inquisition among them; and certainly, it will never be well with us till something like the Spanish Inquisition be in England." Again the jury was sent back to their room, and the prisoners returned to Newgate; both being so kept for another twenty-four hours; the jury without victuals, drink, or other accommodations. The next morning they were again brought into Court, and the usual question respecting their verdict being put, the Foreman first replied, "You have our written verdict already." The Recorder refusing to allow it to be read, the Clerk repeated the query, "How say you, is William Penn guilty or not guilty?" The Foreman answered: "Not guilty." The same verdict was given in the case of William Mead. The jury being separately questioned, they all made the same reply. The Recorder, exasperated at their decision and firmness, after pouring out his invectives upon them, said: "The Court fines you forty marks a man, and imprisonment till paid."
William Penn now demanded his liberty; but the Mayor said, "No, you are in for your fines." "Fines! for what?" replied Penn. "For contempt of Court," was the answer. Penn then declared that, according to the laws, no man could be fined without a trial by jury; but the Mayor ordered him and Mead first to the bail-dock, and then to the jail; where the jury was likewise consigned.
But this noble stand of the jury for law and right was not allowed to terminate in the punishment of these upright men, and the continued gratification of the revenge of the unjust Judges. After ineffectually demanding of the Court their release two or three times, a writ of habeas corpus was granted by Judge Vaughan; who, upon hearing the case, decided their fine and imprisonment illegal, and set them free.
The usage of the Courts had not before been reduced to a legal and positive form. It had been the occasional practice of the Bench to impose fines on "inconvenient juries," and had long remained practically an unsettled question, whether a jury had a right so far to exercise its own discretion as to bring in a verdict contrary to the sense of the Court. This important point was now decided; the Judges – there were others associated with Vaughan – adopting the views that it was the special function of the jury to judge of the evidence, and that the Bench, though at liberty to offer suggestions for the consideration of the jurymen, might not lawfully coerce them.
William Penn, anxious to have the cases of himself and his friend reviewed by a Superior Court, wrote to his father, affectionately desiring him not to interfere to have him released. But the old man, who was fast declining, and anxious to have the company and attentions of his son, to whom he was not only reconciled, but on whose filial affection and care he had learned to lean for comfort and support, was not willing to wait the tardy process of law; and therefore paid the fines of both the Friends, and had them set free. The Admiral survived but a few days the liberation of his son; in which time he sent one of his friends to the King and Duke of York, to make his dying request, that, so far as they could, they would hereafter befriend his loved son; which both promised to do. Addressing his son shortly before his death, he said: "Son William, if you and your friends keep to your plain way of preaching, and your plain way of living, you will make an end of the priests to the end of the world." Again – sensible, it is probable, of the wrong he had before committed in his course towards his son – he said, emphatically: "Let nothing in the world tempt you to wrong your conscience. I charge you, do nothing against your conscience; so you will keep peace at home, which will be a feast to you in the day of trouble."
Near the close of this year, William Penn was again arrested at Wheeler Street meeting, by some of the officers of Robinson, Lieutenant of the Tower, who had sent them there for the purpose, and he was taken before him. His examination, as published, shows his Christian courage and firmness, as he exposed the duplicity of Robinson in his profession of friendship for him; and asserted his innocence of the charges made against him. He was sent to Newgate for six months; during which time he drew up an account of the memorable trial at the Old Bailey; also several dissertations which were afterwards published as tracts: one of these was, "The great Case of Liberty of Conscience, once more briefly Debated, and Defended by authority of Scripture, Reason, and Antiquity."
Soon after his release he married Gulielma Maria Springett, daughter of Sir William Springett. She was a pious young woman, of well-educated and amiable manners. After his marriage he settled in Hertfordshire.
In 1677 George Fox, William Penn, Robert Barclay, and some other Friends, went over to Holland on a religious visit, and travelled into Germany. In the course of this journey, William Penn and two other Friends visited Elizabeth, Princess Palatine of the Rhine, at her Court at Herwerden. She was the oldest daughter of Frederick V., Elector Palatine, and at one time King of Bohemia; her mother being the sister of Charles I. of England. She is represented to have been a woman of good natural capacity, well educated, and of amiable disposition and manners; and to have governed her small territory with good judgment and much consideration for the welfare of her subjects. Having been brought under the power of religion, she manifested strong interest in others who were sincere in their religious convictions, and was opposed to interference with liberty of conscience. Having become acquainted with the religious tenets of Friends, by conversation with Robert Barclay and Benjamin Furly, who visited her in 1676, and with women Friends from Amsterdam, she found them to answer to the convictions of Truth on her own mind; and she not only gladly received Friends when they came to see her, but in her letters to several of the more prominent members among them, and to others at the English Court, she unhesitatingly expressed her high estimation of them, and her disapproval of the persecution to which those that held them were subjected.
The Friends named, having requested permission to have a religious opportunity with her, it was readily granted; she having in her family at that time the Countess of Hornes, her intimate friend, and a French lady. Of this interview William Penn thus writes in his journal: "I can truly say it, and that in God's fear, I was very deeply and reverently affected with the sense that was upon my spirit of the great and notable day of the Lord, and the breaking in of his eternal power upon all nations; and of the raising of the slain Witness to judge the world; who is the Treasury of life and peace, of wisdom and glory, to all that receive Him in the hour of his judgments, and abide with Him. The sense of this deep and sure foundation, which God is laying as the hope of eternal life and glory for all to build upon, filled my soul with an holy testimony to them, which in a living sense was followed by my brethren; and so the meeting ended about the eleventh hour."
In the afternoon they held another meeting with them, which was also so remarkably favored, that William Penn says: "Well, let my right hand forget its cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, when I shall forget the loving-kindness of the Lord, and the sure mercies of our God to us, his travailing servants, that day."
Subsequently, on their return towards Holland, these Friends again stopped at Herwerden, and upon informing the Princess of their arrival, they were again gladly received by her and her friends. A meeting being held with them and some others whom they had invited, the next morning, William Penn states in his journal: "About eight the meeting began, and held till eleven, several persons of the city, as well as those of her own family, being present. The Lord's power very much affected them, and the Countess was twice much broken while we spoke. After the people were gone out of the chamber, it lay upon me from the Lord to speak to them two – the Princess and the Countess – with respect to their particular conditions; occasioned by these words from the Princess, 'I am fully convinced; but oh! my sins are great.' While I was speaking, the glorious power of the Lord wonderfully rose, yea, after an awful manner, and had a deep entrance upon their spirits; especially the Countess, so that she was broken to pieces: God hath raised, and I hope fixed, his own testimony in them."
The next day they had a parting interview in the chamber of the Princess, which was equally favored. "Magnified be the name of the Lord; He overshadowed us with His glory. His heavenly, breaking, dissolving power richly flowed among us, and his ministering angel of life was in the midst of us."
During the time of severe suffering through which Friends were passing in Great Britain after the Restoration, as was natural, on finding that redress or abatement of their grievances was almost beyond hope, they seriously entertained a project for finding homes somewhere beyond the reach of their fellow-men, who seemed bent on extirpating them, by the slow process of the cruel punishments inflicted for their religious faith. George Fox, in common with several other prominent members, seriously contemplated the purchase of a tract of land from the Indians in North America; where, not the whole body of Friends in Great Britain, but such as felt themselves free to leave their native land, might emigrate and enjoy the right of worshipping the Almighty according to the dictates of their consciences.
Josiah Cole, while engaged in religious service in America, was commissioned to look out, and enter into treaty for such a resting-place; and at one time he had several interviews with the chiefs of the Susquehanna Indians, in order to treat with them for a part of their territory. Owing to a war coming on between that tribe and another, the proposed purchase fell through.
In 1676 William Penn, as trustee for the creditors of Edward Billinge, one of the proprietors of West Jersey, and afterwards by the purchase of a proprietary right in East Jersey, became concerned in the colonization of that Province. Others were associated with him in the undertaking, among whom were several of his own Society, under whose management a peaceful settlement was effected. A form of government was agreed on for West Jersey, and a declaration of fundamental principles, to be incorporated in it, consented to; among which was the stipulation, "No person to be called in question or molested for his conscience, or for worshipping according to his conscience."
Many Friends of good estates, and highly esteemed for their religious standing and experience, crossed the Atlantic to this land of liberty, and between 1676 and 1681 about fourteen hundred had arrived and settled; principally in the country bordering the eastern shore of the Delaware. These immigrants suffered the privations and hardships incident to beginning civilized life in an unbroken wilderness, surrounded by savages, who were dependent in great measure upon the uncertain supplies of the chase for their own sustenance, and who rarely laid up much in store for future wants. But, by uniform uprightness in all their dealings with these children of the forest, and their Christian kindness towards them, they soon gained their good-will, and, in times of scarcity, excited their sympathy; so that often they were relieved by voluntary offerings of corn and meat from these untutored red men, when it seemed as though otherwise they must have suffered for food.
Proud, in the preface to his "History of Pennsylvania," gives in a note an account of these trials, drawn up by one of the Friends who settled in New Jersey, containing the following passages:
"A providential hand was very visible and remarkable in many instances that might be mentioned, and the Indians were even rendered our benefactors and protectors. Without any carnal weapon, we entered the land and inhabited therein, as safe as if there had been thousands of garrisons; for the Most High preserved us from harm, both of man and beast." "The aforesaid people (Friends) were zealous in performing their religious services; for having at first no meeting-house to keep a public meeting in, they made a tent or covert of sail-cloth to meet under; and after they got some little houses to dwell in, then they kept their meetings in one of them till they could build a meeting-house."
In the course of the business which necessarily claimed his attention in the colonization of the province of New Jersey, William Penn naturally had his thoughts frequently directed towards the settlements of his countrymen on the far-distant shores of America; and having been disappointed in the part he took in English politics, in an unsuccessful effort to procure the election of his friend, Algernon Sidney, to Parliament, his interest in that part of the world increased, as his mind became occupied with the idea of settling a free colony in the pathless wilderness on the other side of the Atlantic; where men should live under an elective government, enact the laws by which they were to be controlled, admit of no master, but all share in equal rights, and rest in the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty. Witnessing the success that attended the removal of Friends to New Jersey, where they were freed from the cruel persecution they had endured while in Great Britain, under which their brethren at home were still suffering grievously, he became desirous to obtain the control of such portion of the yet unappropriated territory over which the King of England claimed the sovereignty, as would enable him to found a colony, and "make a holy experiment" – as he called it – of opening an asylum for the oppressed of every land; where there should be secured equality of political and civil rights, universal liberty of conscience, personal freedom, and a just regard for the rights of property.